Friday, February 15, 2013

Day 5 saw us pulling into port on the Mexican island of Cozumel at 8:00 am.

Renowned for its beautiful reefs for scuba diving, I wasn't going to be partaking of its beautiful reefs as it was a family outing day. Some other time.

Some Mexican Navy patrol boats were tied up at the pier across from the cruise ships.

Instead of me taking off and going scuba diving, we had something special planned for the kids.

Yep, we had booked them a dolphin encounter.

Leah was too little to do the swim with the dolphin activity so we did just the encounter - so the kids, along with Tash to supervise got to stand on a submerged platform and interact with some dolphins.

I was stuck far away on the observation deck taking pictures.

The dolphins are quite well trained. Eaxch one has their own individual trainer, and they know 250 separate commands based on hand and body language.

Like this hand signal:

The dolphins each eat about 40 pounds of fish per day, much of it hand fed by the adoring kids during the encounter. Every kid fed them at least two fish each, plus the trainer was pretty generous as well:

They demonstrated how they could leap out of the water and the whole encounter ended with a spalsh.

The Dolphins then waved goodbye to end the show.

After the Dolphin encounter we did some shopping as we had plenty of time before the ship left port. Of course I had to scientifically sample the various types of tequila at the tequilleria (it got smother the more samples you had -- funny that). We bought a gift-box sampler as a gift for my dad and a bottle of Licor Limon (Lime flavored Tequila) for Tash as she liked the sample of it quite a lot -- it's practically a Margarita all on its own.

Just before sunset the ship left port, guided out to see by a pilot boat.

After arriving back on the ship it was time for a quick rest and then to participate in pirate games and prepare for the pirate deck party. Argh!

Disney made sure that awaiting in our cabin were the required "Pirates In The Caribbean" bandanas.

Even Stitch dressed up as a pirate and posed with the kids for pictures.

The deck party was a lot of fun with a fun show put on by Mickey and the gang.

In the midst of the party Captain Hook boarded and tried to take over the ship, but Mickey and the crew prevailed, with the helkp of the kids all answering the pirate quiz correctly.

At dinner, the waitstaff were also dressed in their swashbuckling best.